What’s On Ronnie’s Calendars 022012

Welcome back for part two in our popular 12-part series. Who it is popular with, I could not say.

Marvel Season One

Marvel seems to have turned it’s freebie comic shop calendar into a more blatant sales pitch this year. For February they are pimping a new graphic novel series, “Season One,” in which they retell for the umpteenth time the origins of their popular characters. The first wave features the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Daredevil and the X-Men.

If you think Hollywood likes to remake the same stories over and over, Tinseltown has nothing on Marvel. Granted the original stories are pretty dated by today’s standards, but they’re still out there for anyone to read so I’m not sure why they keep going back to the well again and again. I may pick up the X-Men one due to my undying love for the Original 5, but that’ll be it.

Misty Knight

Well, I still haven’t scored a copy of the 2012 Women of Marvel calendar — and I’d say at this point I never will — so let’s continue the Unofficial RROY REPORT Women of Marvel Calendar, in which I highlight a dozen Marvel ladies who deserve time in the spotlight but have so far been avoided by the official calendar makers.

In honor of Black History Month, I give you Misty Knight. If Pam Grier had been a superheroine, she would have been Misty Knight.

Created by Tony Isabella and Arvell Jones in the midst of the blaxploitation and Kung Fu crazes of the 1970s, Misty is a former police officer with a bionic arm and mad detective and martial arts skillz.

Misty lost an arm in a bomb attack and so Tony Stark gave her a fancy metal one (Why he doesn’t do that for all injured service people I do not know). She left the police force to start up a private detective agency with her pal Colleen Wing.

Misty has never headlined her own comic (probably because she lacks a cool superheroine name) and has primarily been a supporting character in other books. She was Iron Fist’s love interest for some time, roomed with Jean Grey for a bit which linked her to the X-Men, was a member of the Daughters of the Dragon and most recently worked in the Heroes for Hire operation.